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JOEUC special issue - Final papers under scrutiny

Now this is the part that I really like. As a co-guest editor (along with Yukika Awazu and Vincent Ribiere) of the special issue “Interacting with Knowledge Management Systems” of Journal of Organizational and End User Computing now the final versions of the “accept/minor rev” or “revise/resubmit” papers have been submitted. We now have 9 high quality rigorous papers under scrutiny and hopefully they will all make it in, what we envision, our double-special-issue. 

24/7 Innovation = Hype?

Reading marketing and technological innovation literature, it is easy to get the impression that businesses today cannot survive without completely satisfying customers’ needs by continuously innovating processes and technology that new product features and new products are based upon. Market share can only be guarded from competitors’ probes by offering innovative products, reasons traditional literature. Yet, is never-ending innovation really the key to the ultimate success?

It seems that truly successful businesses know better. Having interviewed senior executives of some of best Slovenian companies on innovation topics, I was struck by two of the answers. On the question of rate of innovation and measuring the innovation process success, Executive director of Development in a manufacturing company argued:

“Sure, we do set goals, we do measure and we do assess the rate of innovation. But this is only for incremental innovation, small ideas that improve daily working practices and result in minor product changes. We are situated in a mature industry with narrow profit margins and products with approximately 5 to 10 years of shelf-life, depending on how well the product design captured the forthcoming trends and future needs of the customers. So our development goals are not oriented towards rapid renewal of product lines and our activities are not labeled with aching urge to replace existing products. Rather, we are harvesting our crops from well-designed products throughout the life-cycle and definitely don’t cut the ‘mature’ stage too early as it is probably the most profitable stage. Also we don’t cut the development cycles as the teething troubles do more harm than good to the brand image. Consider the infamous case of Mercedes A not passing the Moose test. We are nevertheless working hard on figuring out the future trends and steadily and prudently updating our product portfolio – when the time is right and with the features and products that are aligned with customers’ needs and which promise the best margins.”

On a similar question of innovation efforts, rate of innovation and innovation measures, Director of Products and Solutions of a company in a telecommunications industry responded:

“As we are smaller than our competitors we can only engage i.e. 1.000 man-years per development of a product for which our bigger multinational competitors will engage 5.000 man-years. In terms of product characteristics and features, I admit that due to lack of resources we don’t offer everything our competition does. However we are nevertheless experiencing better results on the market. Why? We are more focused on nurturing only the truly value-added innovations. Besides, we don’t deal with so many complexity issues in the development, production, sales and after sales stages. In example, coordinating a 1.000 man-year effort takes much less effort than a 5.000 man-year one. And it seems that the customer relationship management processes such as after sales are just about managing the existing products. I don’t know how it would be if we added much more products or features.”

These responses echo 2005 Gottfredson and Aspinall’s article in Harvard Business Review on the Innovation versus Complexity topic. They suggest that companies can identify the point at which product innovation maximizes both profits and revenues and argue that for most firms, number of product and service offerings that would optimize profits and revenues is considerably lower than the number they offer today. Continual launches of new products and line extensions add complexity throughout a company’s operations, and as the costs of managing that complexity multiply, margins shrink. Organizations that fail to check proliferating product lines and overly-customized services lose efficiency and confuse their customers.

Instead, organizations must figure out their zero-complexity baseline and justify additional offerings one by one: “What would your company look like if it made and sold only a single product or service? Answering that question is important for two reasons. First, virtually every complexity reduction exercise we have seen that does not do this has failed to break through organizational resistance…. [Second, only] by stripping away all the products, options, and configurations do managers get a clear sense of the extent of the complexity and its costs,” (Gottfredson & Aspinall, 2005).

For example, custom truck builder Navistar found that most consumers would opt for a generic model if Navistar could deliver it cheaply, quickly, and reliably. It introduced a modular design and realized a 25% assembly savings. The few customers who still wanted customized configurations went to Navistar’s competitors who picked up the complexity and costs of providing that customization. Burger King saw that several products were complex and costly to handle as some of the ingredients required special manufacturing (bake, freeze), distribution and handling in outlets. They replaced those products with – from the customer perspective – similar ones, for which all of the ingredients could go through the usual supply chain, inventory management would be simpler (not requiring costly frozen storage). Sales did not drop while the complexity and the costs were driven down.

After thinking about this, the “24/7 innovation” seems like a hype if not even a dogma now. It appears that the best advice is to make competition irrelevant by redesigning buyer value to expand existing markets and create entirely new ones (as suggested by Kim & Mauborgne in their 1997 influential article), while simultaneously keeping in mind the whole product portfolio and tracking how do new products grow in complexity from the consumer, operational, supply chain, financial, and strategic criteria.

Refs:
Gottfredson, M., & Aspinall, K. (2005). Innovation versus complexity: what is too much of a good thing? Harv Bus Rev, 83(11), 62-71.
Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. (1997). Value Innovation: The Strategic Logic of High Growth., Harv Bus Rev, 75(1), 103-112.

Demystifying the Link between Innovation and Business Value

After officially completing the Leveraging Ideas for Organizational Innovation [I4I] research project, the research team is kept busy with delivering the project reports to collaborating companies and revising papers that were submitted to journals.

Project sponsors were pleased with the research findings and decided to continue funding the project, which is led by Dr Kevin C Desouza of Information School at University of Washington. We are looking forward to an exciting few months and hope to create actionable knowledge of value.

Here is a brief synopsis of the new project:

Two universal truths underpin most business operations: (1) unless businesses can demonstrate value to their stakeholders on a constant basis they will lose customers and markets, get overrun by the competition, and eventually become extinct, and (2) to generate business value, an organization must constantly innovate, and do so in an effective and efficient manner. Finding support for these truths is not difficult; consider the following comments by two seasoned executives:

“I know we need to show value…today we are being evaluated in 30 or 60 day intervals. The days of doing one-year projects that pay off two years from now are long gone…my boss wants to know how the money I am spending today is getting us returns next week, next month, or at best, next three months…I need to be able to show the value for this so-called innovation.” ~ VP of Research & Development, Information Technology Organization

“Innovation…sure, I think it contributes to the business value…If I did not think so, I would not be here talking to you. But, I would not know how to show you on paper the linkage…I mean we know that it [innovation] does lead to business value, if we did not we would not spend on it…we are rational beings…but every board meeting I struggle to communicate the value of the innovation…The link is so elusive…It is touchy-feely but not concrete.” ~ CIO, Financial Services Organization

Such quotes, and several more from our research project, helped to deduce another truth. Regardless of departmental function (e.g. IT, Sales, Operations, etc), most executives lack good mechanisms for (1) measuring the business value of innovations, and (2) communicating the value of innovation projects. Over 85% of the executives we interviewed requested that research be conducted to identify solutions that can address these two issues. These issues are salient for a number of reasons.

Inability to measure the business value of innovation limits an organization’s ability to build effective innovation programs. Resources spent on innovation may be underutilized or ineffectively utilized. In addition, resources spent on innovation may conflict or compete with other organizational efforts. Moreover, outcomes of innovation efforts may be nothing more than good ideas, which may never get commercialized or diffused, thereby limiting any returns on the original investment.

Not being able to communicate the value of resources spent on innovation makes executives vulnerable. First, the executives will not be able to convince their external stakeholders that current resources directed towards innovation efforts will secure a better position for the organization’s future. Second, and equally important, rallying support from their peer-executives on innovation projects will be very difficult, if not impossible. The linkage on monies spent and bottom-line value, both in terms of operational gains and strategic advantages, will be elusive. Third, being able to communicate to the employees of the organization and set a consistent vision, mission, and agenda for corporate innovation will be difficult. Without clear metrics, an innovation program is not clearly understood, not supported by the executives, and not embraced by the employees. Clearly, without metrics an innovation program is fundamentally flawed.

The goal of this research project will be to uncover mechanisms that can be used to (1) link innovation to business value, and (2) communicate the value of innovation.